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Talking Points – Vacation Issue

Over 330,000 Chinese are studying in the US and on average more than 8,000 Chinese come to the US everyday to study, do business and travel. Many tourist destinations have caught on, beginning with Los Angeles, New York, amusement parks and outlet malls. But the tourists are increasingly visiting a greater variety of places, including national parks.

This week, the Idaho Falls newspaper reported that the flow of Yellowstone-bound Chinese tourists had caused one local hotel to hire a Chinese-speaking receptionist and other businesses were printing information in Chinese. The Billings, Montana paper reported that Yellowstone had recruited three Chinese-speaking rangers to offer guided walks, introductions to the park and more.

By chance, we tied a Montana business training program into a quick visit to the park just last week, encountering more than a few of the visiting Chinese. Many were students in pairs or families, but others were on package tours.

In some of the park's visitor centers you displays include Chinese translations (though they are inexplicably listed as 普通话 rather than 简体字中文) along with translations in Spanish, Japanese, and other languages. (Click here for general guides in various languages.)

Sadly, we don't know if visiting Chinese are stopping at and asking about the use of the yin-yang symbol at the Billings Depot. The symbol is used because it was the symbol of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Billings is named after Fredrick Billings, who was Northern Pacific's president 1873-1881.

We do know that some of the region's Chinese restaurants, such as Chinatown (in Chinese a different name: 金厨， Golden Kitchen) in Cody, Wyoming (pop. 9,520 in 2010) and Red Lodge, Montana (pop. 2,125) are doing a booming business serving hungry tourists, including many arriving on Chinese tour buses.

Chinese food can be found nearly everywhere. It’s easily China’s most successful export. Please send us photos you take of Chinese restaurants on your travels (outside of China, Hong Kong/Macau, and Taiwan). Include your name, the location of the restaurant and when you visited. We’ll compile these on our website and will be happy to credit you. Send your photos to uschina@usc.edu.

A panel of experts from the People's Republic and the United States will discuss the Chinese government's new regulations on religion and their implications for Christian communities, focusing on the interplay between the globalization and localization processes of Christianity in China.

Author and Art Deco Society of California Preservation Director Therese Poletti will give an illustrated presentation on Chinese motifs as a form of exotica in architecture and design in the Golden State.

Ms. Sara Velas, President of the International Panorama Council will present a lecture as an overview of 20th & 21st century panoramas in Asia, with a focus on the panoramas of China. Enjoy the gardens and exhibits of the Velaslavasay Panorama before and after this lecture. Ambient Folk & Classical Chinese music will be performed in the garden after the presentation by musician Susien Cheng.

Professor Bixiao He presents a talk on Chinese modern journalism and interpreting the particular role of Chinese modern journalism played in the process of the China's transition from an empire to party state. This study puts forward a parallel concept of "national press" and "urban press" to examine the interaction between the two different kinds of modernity-pursuing in the specific spatial-temporal historical context.

This talk will explore the role of Emperors, Empresses, and other imperial men and women of the Chinese courts in the sponsorship, design, and fashioning of paintings, from the 11th through the 18th centuries.

The Energy and National Security Program and the Freeman Chair in China Studies is pleased to host Kevin Gallagher and Bo Kong to discuss the role of Chinese state financing in global energy development and to present findings from two of their recently published studies from the Global Economic Governance Initiative at Boston University.

Former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt M. Campbell, one of the chief architects of the pivot (also known as the rebalance), states in his new book, The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia, that one of the central tenets of the Obama Administration's pivot was building relationships with emerging Asian powers.

"The Way of the Dragon" stars Lee as Tang Lung, a martial arts expert recruited to protect his relatives' Chinese restaurant from gangsters in Rome. The film broke Hong Kong box office records, outperforming The Big Boss and Fist of Fury, Lee's earlier cinematic successes.

Kara Wai gives a powerful performance in the world premiere of Andy Lo's directorial debut. In her role as a woman suffering from Alzheimer's, she takes under her wing an aimless young man (Chan) who has come to Hong Kong to look for the father who abandoned him.

Kara Wai won her first Hong Kong Film Award for her effervescent performance in this delightful kung fu comedy. She plays a young student who marries her dying teacher to keep his inheritance away from his untrustworthy relatives.

In this Tibetan Buddhist art workshop you will learn how to draw the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion according to the Tibetan thangka tradition. Avalokiteshvara ("One who hears the cries of the world") is the Bodhisattva of Compassion and protector of Tibet. He is the Buddha of the famous mantra om mani padme hum, and the Dalai Lama is considered to be the earthly incarnation of Avalokiteshvara.

Continuing its summer film series, Asia Society Texas Center presents the first title in the Rush Hour franchise, which spawned three films and a recent television series. Global icon Jackie Chan stars as Detective Inspector Lee, who is tracking down a Chinese crime syndicate in Los Angeles after Hong Kong's transfer from British rule. Chris Tucker plays an LA police officer, assigned to divert Lee from an FBI investigation into the kidnapping of the local Chinese Consul's daughter.

See the micro-budget sci-fi omnibus that beat Star Wars: The Force Awakens at the Hong Kong box office. Chinese authorities considered Ten Years so dangerous that they banned it from theaters and even blacked out broadcast of the Hong Kong Film Awards simply because it was nominated. Made for the equivalent of about $70,000, this collection of five short films, each by a different director, speculates darkly on what Hong Kong will look like in 2025.

China's Past: New Strategies for Teaching the Sources of Chinese Civilization will use primary sources, rich text, and images to build an understanding of selected topics in early Chinese history and civilization. The week will focus on adapting content and materials to one's own classroom in grades 3-8.

Detective Inspector Lee and Detective Carter return in the second installment of the Rush Hour franchise, this time both venturing to Lee's home of Hong Kong. Chinese cinematic superstar Zhang Ziyi joins the star-studded cast, along with Don Cheadle and Roselyn Sánchez.

Based on Design for Living, a popular stage play by Sylvia Chang (who stars in the movie alongside the eternally suave Chow Yun-fat), Office depicts the ups and downs-romantic and financial-of a financial firm's staff during 2008's global economic turmoil.

In the third installment of this popular franchise, Donnie Yen reprises his role as the real-life kung fu master best known for having trained a young Bruce Lee. In this edition, which was nominated for eight Hong Kong Film Awards, Ip is settling into life as a family man, but he's soon called to protect Hong Kong from a ruthless American businessman (with surprisingly strong boxing skills) who is trying to make a land grab.

The Blade is Tsui Hark's masterful tribute to the martial arts films of his youth. A reimagining of director Chang Cheh's 1967 wuxia landmark The One-Armed Swordsman, this phantasmagoric action film moves like an out-of-control freight train.

Tibetan Buddhist monks from Drepung Loseling Monastery will construct a mandala sand painting and perform special ceremonies August 18-21 in Asia Society Texas Center's Louisa Stude Sarofim Gallery. During this ritual, millions of grains of sand are painstakingly laid into place in order to purify and heal the environment and its inhabitants.

Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles (Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries) accompanies the prolific Chinese director Jia Zhangke on a walk down memory lane as Jia revisits his hometown and other locations from his ever-growing body of work.

Events

Things China Working Group is an informal group to explore research interest in the material networks, systems, economies, media and practices of communication pursued within China or between China and its national and international partnerships. Open only to USC graduate students and faculty.

Things China Working Group is an informal group to explore research interest in the material networks, systems, economies, media and practices of communication pursued within China or between China and its national and international partnerships. Open only to USC graduate students and faculty.